Poor Elijah's Almanack: A little history

Of all the things American students don't know, they don't know American history worst. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, while only a disappointing one third of eighth graders scored proficient or above in math and reading, only an even more disappointing seventeen percent were proficient in history. By their senior year in high school, just twelve percent could muster a proficient score.

No Child Left Behind has compounded the problem. NCLB-mandated testing in English, math, and science has led states to concentrate on these curricular areas to avoid the law's penalties. To boost their subjects' status, social studies partisans are demanding tests, too, but given the glut of dubious testing that already devours class time, more isn't a solution.

Some experts recommend broader enrollment in high school civics courses. Except today's civics programs frequently accent "service learning" where students earn credit for volunteer work. There's certainly nothing wrong with helping your neighbors, but being a good citizen isn't the same as knowing how citizenship and government work.

Rampant multiculturalism has taken its toll. History courses shouldn't sugarcoat our nation's shortcomings or minimize the contributions of women and minorities. But they also shouldn't magnify anybody just because they're a woman or a minority. Juan Seguin, a Mexican Texan, fought at the Alamo. Zitkala Sa was a Sioux musician. It's possible they accomplished more in their lives than you or I will, but we aren't featured on the cover of a mainstream middle school history text, and they are. Who didn't make the cover, and the curriculum, so they could?

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We also overrate hands-on activities. The National Council of Social Studies honored a teacher for taking her fifth graders out on the playground to re-enact Pickett's Charge. Unfortunately, loosing ten-year-olds to run at each other with sticks and toy guns doesn't teach them much about the Civil War.

The worst blow struck against students' knowledge of history is education reform's disdain for knowledge itself. For decades reformers have belittled facts and celebrated "thinking skills." That's why critics of a Massachusetts history curriculum could condemn it as "incredibly fact riddled." It's why a teacher featured in NEA Today would portray history instruction as a choice between "facts" and "burning issues."

It sounds swell to "consider how to make the world a better place," but before kids can discuss religious fundamentalism, they need to know the world's religions. Before they can fathom the complexities of third world debt, they need to know how economies work. Before they can cure global warming, they need to know what the globe looks like.

Too many teachers forget that the only reason they're equipped to talk about "burning issues" is some other teacher once taught them the basics they're now trying to skip with their own students.

We're talking about kids who don't know the name of the ocean between us and England, or that we fought England, or that the Revolution came before the Civil War, or what either was about. For them the past is an unchronological jumble. That's when it's not an unchronological void.

Before you can understand cause and effect, you need to know what happened in the right order. Before you can discuss the Bill of Rights, you have to know what it says.

Of course, first you have to have heard of it.

When they're not grappling with issues, history teachers are also expected to help teach reading and writing "across the curriculum." History classes should involve more than multiple choice so kids can practice their English skills. But matters have gone far beyond that sensible objective.

One model unit presents contrasting nineteenth century views of slavery. The unit's stated primary objective is to teach that "bias may affect the accuracy of information."

That might be your objective if you're an English teacher, which I am. But if you're a history teacher, which I also am, the primary objective in a unit about slavery before the Civil War should be teaching about slavery before the Civil War.

Understanding the information is the point.

Another sample unit about Saratoga includes a battle summary, a timeline of one soldier's participation, some diary entries, and a fictionalized account of Ben Franklin's diplomacy in France. The material looks good. Unfortunately, it would take eighth graders three weeks to get through it all.

I spend thirty minutes on Saratoga. I teach kids about the British strategy and the course of the battle. I describe the terrain and Benedict Arnold's mad dash at the British line. But Saratoga, while important and interesting, isn't worth one twelfth of the entire year. Not if I expect to teach the rest of United States history.

It's both good and necessary to grapple with issues and trace themes. But before you can grapple and trace, you need to build a chronological foundation of facts, events, people, places, and ideas.

Many kids, understandably, aren't eager to do this.

Sadly, neither are many adults at the helm of public education.

And that's our more serious problem.

Peter Berger teaches English in Weathersfield, Vermont. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.